Lawman's Redemption by Marilyn Pappano Page B

could start by telling her you’re glad she’s here, that you welcome this opportunity to get to know her.”
    â€œYou mean, lie to her.”
    Hallie wasn’t sure which of them her heart ached for more—Les, who would deny it until she was blue in the face, but who desperately needed someone to love her, or Brady, who would also deny it, but who also needed badly to love and be loved.
    â€œWould it be such a lie?” she asked softly. “Does she have to prove she’s your daughter before you can care about her?”
    He didn’t answer, but stared off toward the house, his expression troubled and grim.
    Hallie touched his arm. “Have all the doubts and questions you want. But for the few days or weeks she’s here, can’t you pretend to be who she thinks you are? After all, she might really be your daughter, and if you lose her now, you may never get her back.”
    â€œAnd what if she’s not my daughter?”
    She shrugged. “If that proves to be the case, what will it have cost you? A little hope?”
    â€œAnd what will it cost her if I pretend to be her father and I’m not?”
    â€œAt least she’ll find out you had a reason for abandoning her. That’s got to be better than believing she wasn’t good enough for her own father to love her.” After another moment’s silence, she asked, “How old was Les when Sandra told you you weren’t her father?”
    â€œThree months.”
    â€œRemember how you felt about her before that? She was your family. She depended on you to take care of her, and you were there for her. As far as she knows, that hasn’t changed. She’s still your family, and she still needs you.”
    â€œIt’s damned hard to reconcile that kid in the house with the baby I used to get up with in the middle of the night for feedings,” he said dryly.
    â€œWe all grow up. I used to be a prissy little girl who played with dolls and cried if someone looked cross-eyed at me. And look at me now.”
    He did, his gaze starting at the top of her head and working its way down to her Pearly Pink Pale toes, and in the process warming her almost beyond bearing. “Yeah, and now you’re a prissy woman who plays with men and can probably still turn on the waterworks at the drop of a pin.”
    â€œI’m not prissy,” she said primly, “and at this point in my life, I don’t even like men, but yes, I can cry on cue with the best of ’em.”
    â€œYou like me. ”
    Hallie studied him. Even though his mouth wasn’t smiling, there was mischief in his blue eyes. Brady Marshall was teasing. This must be a day for the record books.
    She screwed up her face as if his comment required serious thought. “Well…you are awfully cute, and you’re a very nice man when you aren’t so busy being distant, and you are definitely well worth playing with. Not that I make a habit of doing that.”
    â€œSo why did you do it with me?”
    With a blush warming her cheeks, she pushed away from the fence and started back toward the house. “Refer back to the ‘you’re awfully cute’ part,” she said when he caught up with her.
    â€œThat’s all it was? If you hadn’t liked the way I look, you would have chosen someone else?”
    â€œWhy did you do it with me? You could have accepted the beer I offered and told me to get lost.”
    â€œMen don’t tell women like you to get lost.”
    â€œEvery man I married did.”
    â€œYou married fools.” He said the words with a dismissive shrug, as if it was so obvious a fact it hardly needed stating. The very matter-of-fact-ness of it salved some little bit of the achedeep inside her and smoothed over some little bit of the wound to her pride.
    She climbed the first step to the stoop, then turned to face him. The extra height put her eye-to-eye with him. “So that was